70%
Enterprise projects that do not succeed1,
and IT Web pointed out that business analytics
capabilities are increasingly necessary in
ensuring success.2
Rising IT complexity and a growing need for business-IT
alignment are coming together to make projects more
complex than ever. Business Analysis (BA) professionals
can empower organisations to prepare for projects as
effectively as possible by getting information to the right
people in a timely fashion. Microsoft SQL Server 2016
can play a critical role in supporting BA leaders as they
work to integrate data into everyday operations, with
three specific features standing out along the way:

1. Policy Enforcement
Giving business users the ability to gather,
use, and analyse information can be invaluable
in helping teams plan projects, set goals,
and maximise the value of the data at their
fingertips. However, doing so opens up new risk
as organisations must carefully control how data moves
between different user groups. BA professionals can
resolve many problems by establishing clear policies
and procedures that govern how data is managed and

used. Enforcing those policies, however, can be a thorn
in even the most vigilant BA professional’s heel.
SQL Server 2016 has been built to eliminate many of
these difficulties by integrating policy enforcement
and rule compliance into the underlying database
engine.3 With this functionality in place, BA leaders can
fine-tune:
• Settings for key database tasks, such as
auto close, auto shrink, page verification and
collation processes.
• Authorisation settings for various internal user
groups, such as managing password policies,
and even guest permissions.
• Rules for backup process completion and how
they will be documented.
• Alerts and parameters for event log notifications.
Managing policies doesn’t have to be a burden as BA
professionals can use pre-built rules and permissions to
simplify internal compliance.

2. Streamlining Analytics
Getting meaningful insights from data often
requires incredibly time-consuming analysis
and data mining. This is especially true as
BA leaders must balance information that
is relevant for immediate use with historic data that
must be leveraged for strategic analysis. A Network
World report delving into this challenge explained that

the Slowly Changing Dimension (SDC) tool within
SQL Server can combine with Temporal Tables to
make it easier to define different data types and
mix-and-match historic and recent data to ensure
information is handled accurately in immediate and
short-term use cases.4
According to the report, Temporal Tables provide
automated track changes to allow BA professionals
to easily balance different sets of information without
having to sacrifice quality. As a result, it becomes much
easier to analyse data sets for a wide array of purposes.
In practice, this functionality enables BA professionals
to look at data sets and automatically adjust the rules
for processing and analysing that information based on
specific time parameters, making it easier to complete
a variety of analysis types without sacrificing quality or
manually adjusting data.

that users can use the reporting tool within SQL Server
2016 to create custom reports. From there, the system
allows you to pin the visualisations from those reports
into the Power BI dashboard. With reports on the
dashboard, users can access that data regardless of
which device type they are using, letting them integrate
information into everyday processes.
The Power BI Dashboards automatically update as the
data behind the custom reports change. In response,
end users always have up-to-date information to
inform their decisions. With these tools in hand,
BA professionals can provide a solid foundation for
decision-making across the business.

Driving Business Success
Through BA Processes
BA professionals canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t single-handedly change a
business, but they can give users across the enterprise
the data and analysis needed to make better choices
day-in, day-out. Increased business complexity can
leave individuals at every level of a company staggering
under a large number of complicated choices,
but BA professionals can simplify those decisions
through effective data management and integration
in the background.

3. Customisable Dashboards
Empowering users with data is easier if that
information is easily accessible to them. This
is where end-user dashboards become an
invaluable asset, and SQL Server 2016 features
custom reporting tools that make dashboards
especially valuable.5 A Microsoft blog post explained

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 offers features
to help in this area, and Learning Tree can
provide the training organisations need to
take full advantage of BA functionality in
SQL Server.